I never thought too much about how to learn jazz guitar. It just kind of happened. One day, I found out there was a band in my middle school where I could play guitar before school.
The class was called “jazz band.”
I didn’t know what jazz was and I didn’t care. I just wanted to be able to play guitar at school.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, my guitar teacher wasn’t great. He made a point of telling me how hard jazz guitar was, and how they like to “make up fancy names for chords so they sound smarter than everybody else.”
He did his best to show me how to play the chords I needed for jazz band though, and that got me through the first month or two of jazz band.
Eventually he took a break from teaching (or at least that’s what he told us) and I was suddenly without a teacher.
Luckily though, I got onto a waiting list for a great guitar teacher in my hometown. He was a local legend, and a real jazz guitar player.
Once my name came up, it was definitely a different lesson experience than what I was used to.
He didn’t want to help me with my jazz band music.
My new teacher wasn’t interested in taking me fishing. He felt it would be better if he taught me how to fish instead.
Learning How to Learn Jazz Guitar
He taught me how to learn jazz guitar in a methodical, systematic way. We did simple, even boring exercises week after week. And as a result, I got better.
A LOT better.
From these lessons I learned important strategies that would make life easier as a jazz guitarist.
The strategies weren’t obvious to me at the time, I just did what I was assigned to do.
But as I’ve thought about my lessons over the years I’ve been able to break them down into 5 strategies that have really helped me. And more importantly, have really helped my students.
How to Learn Jazz Guitar: 5 Essential Strategies
Focus On Building Skills
This was the biggest change for me in guitar lessons as a kid. We didn’t work on songs together. He didn’t spend a ton of time teaching me music theory terms. Instead, we built the skills that made jazz guitar playing easy.
I spent months playing through exercise after exercise. Just putting in the time and moving through the process.
And one day, it was just easy. I no longer had to wonder how to play a particular chord, or even think about it. It was just there.
It’s easy to get hung up on concepts and flashy ideas in jazz guitar. Especially today. It’s easy to focus on quick fixes – “I need to sound better right now.”
But make sure you learn the basics first, or the concepts won’t be of any use. Focus on building your skills, and the rest of it will take care of itself.
There are 3 main skills you should be focusing on, guitar-wise:
- Chords – Check out the ultimate guide to chords to get started
- Scales – Our jazz guitar scales guide will point you in the right direction
- Arpeggios – Try learning major 7 arpeggios first
Take care of these technical skills, and playing jazz guitar will get easier.
Learn Some Songs
Being able to play some songs is kind of the point of learning how to play jazz guitar. It’s easy to get caught up in exercises and concepts – but it’s important to remember that you want to actually play some music at some point.
You don’t need to know every song there is, just pick a couple that you like and start working on them.
Learn how to play the melody. Figure out a couple of ways to play through the chord progressions. Work on playing solos with a backing track or along with a recording.
This should be fun.
You don’t necessarily need to memorize songs. There are people who will disagree with me on this point, and that’s fine. It depends on what you really want to do.
If you want to play jazz for fun by yourself or with friends, then who cares if you have it memorized or not?
Now, if you’re going to music school or trying to be a professional jazz musician, then yeah… you probably need to have your tunes learned by heart.
But also if there is a song you like to play a lot, you’ll probably end up having it memorized anyway. It’s ok if you need to read the chord changes or the melody.
It is a different experience if you learn to play a song by heart, and that’s worth exploring. But it’s also perfectly ok if you need to read through the songs as you play.
There’s not really a right or wrong way to do this. It’s about what works for you. And what you’re going to want to come back to doing every day.
Listen to Great Jazz Guitarists
It will be impossible to play jazz guitar well if you aren’t listening to jazz. It seems obvious, but it still needs to be said.
There are players out there who really do try to learn jazz without listening to it. And then they wonder why their playing doesn’t sound quite right.
I was lucky that my teacher would share recordings with me. Each week for a while he sent me home with a new tape to listen to. We’d talk a little about what I liked, he’d tell me a little about the guitar player on the recording, and I’d get a new tape the next week.
I was absorbing the style through my ears, so when I tried to play jazz, I had an idea of what I was going for.
Technology Makes it Easy
Now with apple music, spotify, and youtube, it’s super easy to listen to great players all the time. And this is a really fun part of the learning process.
You just need to pick a jazz guitar player and download an album or two. Put them on your regular rotation of stuff you listen to.
Listen to them a lot. I used to keep a single CD in my car to listen to while I drove. It would stay in the car for at least a month before I’d change it out.
Listening like this, you’ll find out who you like, and you’ll start to get their sounds into your ears. I strongly recommend you listen to albums not playlists.
It’s important to remember that the albums were put together as a cohesive artistic project. You get a better snapshot of what that player was doing and thinking at that time than if you rely on “essential songs” type playlists.
Click here to check out my top 10 albums for getting started with jazz guitar.
Play Some Music
Sometimes you need to stop working on stuff and just play. Along with my lessons, I was constantly playing in groups around town.
I was playing in my school groups. And in a community big band that played gigs multiple times a month. I was also playing in pit orchestras for local musical theater productions.
I was playing with a jazz group I put together to try and get some gigs of my own.
You learn a lot by playing that you won’t learn in lessons, articles, or in the practice room. It’s where you try things out in real time to see what is working for you… and what isn’t.
You don’t have to be performing or even playing with other people to get into the “playing” aspect of this. Once again, technology makes this easy for us.
Play along with an iRealPro track for 5 minutes. Don’t worry about mistakes, don’t go back and fix things, just play. Treat it like a performance, or like you’re playing with someone else who isn’t going to stop.
You can also do this with a friend who plays, or by yourself. Just play. It’s fun.
Find a Good Teacher
A good teacher – online or in person – can really help you make some progress in your playing. In my case, I just lucked out as a kid and wandered into the perfect situation.
I didn’t know what I was doing or what I was looking for. Luckily I just ended up with a great jazz guitar teacher who really helped my playing take off. But for future teachers, I had an idea of what I needed, at least.
When you’re looking for a teacher, they should be someone who really knows their stuff. Someone who has done what you’re trying to be able to do.
Degrees and professional experience are nice, but not really necessary. Sometimes the best players can make the worst teachers.
What you really want is someone who can break things down into simple steps that make sense to you.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what they can do… it matters what they can help YOU to do.
A good piece of advice I was given once is – you want a teacher who can play, not a player who has to teach.
An ok player who is really focused on helping you learn will take you way farther than a smokin player who is just cashing checks between gigs.
Conclusion
Learning how to play jazz guitar doesn’t have to be a struggle. You just need to focus on the simple things:
- Build your skills: Chords, Scales, and Arpeggios
- Learn songs
- Listen to great jazz guitarists
- Play – don’t just practice
- Find a good teacher if you can
And most important of all, keep trying. The best players are the ones who kept going and didn’t quit. If you keep working at it, you’ll keep getting better. Little by little.
Are you stuck learning how to play jazz guitar? Contact me today and I’ll help you out.Have a question? Ask me anything about jazz guitar and I’ll get back to you ASAP.